Mary Lattimore’s music functions as a kind of emotional synesthesia.
Rather than seeing colors when she hears notes, Lattimore feels things:
sadness, hope, longing, memory. She funnels all of that into stirring
songs composed on her harp. “I feel like a lot of my music is me
channeling feelings or memories,” she says. “I just do whatever I want,
and try to paint a picture of a memory.”
The memory that provides the basis for At the Dam is particularly striking. Lattimore received a prestigious fellowship from the Pew
Center for Arts & Heritage — a rare honor given out to just 12 people
every year — and she used the funds to take a road trip across America
with a friend, writing and recording songs at each stop along the way.
Armed with little more than her harp and her laptop, Lattimore drew
inspiration from each location, letting the environments in which she
recorded seep into her work. The result is music that is stirring, delicate
and beautiful, Lattimore’s harp at times bright and skipping, other
times distant and hazy, swathed in gauzy delay. The net eect feels like
what it is, recreations of moments from the past, tender, soft and warm.